(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus, and method for so using, for locating and finish drilling cooling holes using a stereovision guided laser drilling process.
(2) Description of the Related Art
In the turbine blades/vanes manufacturing process, the parts are first precision-cast and then the cooling holes are installed either by laser drilling or by electrical discharge machining (EDM). A method that casts the cooling holes at the time of casting the part, offers the advantage of process simplification with enhanced quality and precision. In addition, complex cooling hole schemes, such as shaped non-cylindrical holes with complex diffuser and metering section geometries, can be cast in by this process that are difficult to directly laser drill or EDM. However, even a high-precision casting process cannot fully cast the complete hole geometry due to the limitations of the casting process (cold shut, core mismatch, slag formation, etc.). These limitations result in partially cast holes—with most of the top portion of the hole geometry completely cast and the bottom portion of the hole geometry shut or plugged by debris or slag.
A CATSCAN system using Computer-aided Tomography, can give scanned slices of the part and by taking the scans very closely one can build up the inside and outside profiles of a part but this takes an inordinately long time to scan at the precision needed and also requires a separate radiation chamber. The evolving QMP (Quartz Micro Probing) system can locate the holes precisely but the rough locations must be known before hand. Also QMP takes a long time and cannot be mounted on the laser machine bed. 3D machine vision alternatives including structured light techniques, have proven difficult due to the depth or shallow angle of the cooling holes. What is therefore needed is an apparatus, and method for using the apparatus, which overcomes the shortcomings of the related art—capable of being mounted on the laser machine alongside the laser drill and with the necessary precision needed.